Friday, July 27, 2007

The ususal; running, knitting, whining and a bear

Oh yippie yahoo, it's almost the weekend. Probably because I stayed out late on Tuesday I've been tired and draggy the rest of the week. I may not sleep well but I still do better when I'm resting and trying to sleep, instead of out and about. I can't believe I can't even stay out one little night during the week without consequences.

Last night Pam and I met again at the Park & Ride for our run. Traffic was abysmal and I was thrilled we didn't have to fight it going to the lot behind the train. We had planned to run the hill route again but I begged off. I've been switching around my orthotics lately and I think running so hard on Wednesday in my back-up pair wasn't a good idea. My shins and knees were feeling just a bit achy so I thought we could get our miles in on a flat route instead. I had forgotten about the little hills on the route but it was still better than running the big hill. I guess that'll teach me about how long and how far I can wear the second pair of orthotics.

We ran about 3.7 miles. That's not according to Mr. Garmin though. For some reason when I restarted it after our stretch it didn't go on. I heard the loud beep and figured it was going, but apparently not. I kept looking at it and wondering why the miles weren't ticking away when I finally realized the timer wasn't changing either. D'oh! After looking at an online map I measured the distance we missed at about a half mile. Yes, it took me 5-6 minutes to figure out that Garmin hadn't restarted. Yes, my brain was going as slowly as my legs. Although my legs seemed to be in some big hurry last night since I felt it in my lungs that I wasn't pacing well. Still.

I'm happy to rest my legs today and tomorrow in preparation for the San Francisco Marathon second half. I've run that several times and know the route and know it's challenging. Partly because of getting up at some unholy early hour, partly because of the uphills, partly because of the steep downhill on the route. I'm looking forward to running it easy as a training run.

I got another couple of inches done on my Cider Moon scarf. I'm glad I bought two skeins of the Cherry Bomb since one won't be enough. I'm hoping that two will be. The scarf is wider than it needed to be and maybe I should have made it narrower so it would be longer. It definitely won't be one of my 6-7 feet long scarves.Today's Gratuitous Bear of the Day is a marathon bear that I bought at the expo of the Portland Marathon. This ended up being one of my least favorite race routes. I thought it was ugly and dirty and yucky. I know so many people who feel it's their favorite and it's hard for me to see what they liked so much. I didn't like the industrial and semi-industrial areas, didn't like the gloom and greyness of everything, didn't like the freshly black-topped steep hill leading to the bridge, didn't like that the most scenic part, running over the bridge, was blocked by construction drapes, really didn't like the reek of urine along the last couple of miles. The strangest thing is I'm going to run it again this October as a training run for New York. Go figure. I named the bear after the St. John's Bridge and I'm hoping that this year I'll get to see it in all its glory. This little panda bear is Johnny.